The State of the Union address this year falls one day after the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. So it's quite fitting that Speaker John Boehner have as his honored guest a black human-rights activist.
But alas, said human-rights activist is also a Cuban dissident, a former political prisoner of the Castro regime and a critic of President Obama's push to normalize relations with Cuba without any concomitant political and economic reforms on the island to empower the impoverished, oppressed people there.
We will watch to see what mention, if any, is given by network journalists tonight to Jorge Luis Garcia Perez. It's safe to predict he will be ignored outright or his appearance briefly noted, and that in such a way as to minimize his compelling story.
Fortunately the Washington Examiner has an excellent exclusive interview with Mr. Garcia Perez. You can read the whole thing here. Here's a taste (emphasis mine):
Antunez, the 43-year-old leader of Cuba’s civic resistance movement, served more than 17 years in prison, with the Castro regime releasing him in 2007 ahead of expected European sanctions. He lives in Cuba and will return there in two weeks.
He was imprisoned in 1990 after participating in a pro-democracy march. In prison, he refused to wear the uniform provided and rejected communist re-education lessons, which resulted in guards sending him to solitary confinement and adding more years to his original five-year sentence.
Already in Washington ahead of Obama’s speech, Antunez thanked Boehner for inviting him and said his presence at the speech is an “important recognition to the Cuban resistance” about the significance of their plight — especially now, just a few days after the administration eased major sanctions on the island nation for the first time in 50 years.
“He is an ambassador for the Cuban resistance — for those struggling inside Cuba,” Antunez told the Washington Examiner on Monday night through an interpreter. “He especially feels that he is here representing all of those prisoners who are not released in response to the Obama-Castro” agreement.
He also highlighted a document, the Agreement for Democracy, signed by top Cuban resistance leaders in 1998, laying out their demands from the Castro regime, including free and fair elections and the release of all political prisoners. He specifically named Ciro Alexis Casanova, Ernesto Borges Perez and Armando Sosa Fortuny as two resistance leaders who remain in prison that should be immediately released.
Antunez also had a strong message for Obama.
“He would tell President Barack Obama that the way to change Cuba is not by engaging the Castro regime — and that Cuba is not the Castro regime,” he said, making the point that “the stronger the regime becomes economically because of investment, the weaker the resistance becomes.”
He also took issue with what he regarded as Obama’s “secret negotiations” with the Castro regime, describing them as “illegitimate” because they did not involve resistance leaders or average Cubans.
“The future of Cuba should not have been agreed to in secret — as these secret negotiations between Cuba and the regime have been carried out,” he said. “No agreement that excludes the Cuban resistance and the Cuban people can be considered legitimate.”
A Cuban of African-American descent, fellow inmates nicknamed him the “black diamond” to recognize what they considered his courage and unbreakable spirit, and many Cuban’s refer to him as the island’s Nelson Mandela.
In his essay “A Word From the Opposition,” in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Democracy, Antunez highlighted the Cuban resistance movement’s adherence to the non-violent principles set forth by Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King.
He is married to Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, president of the Rosa Parks Women’s Movement.
Prominent members of the Cuban-American community in Congress, Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, both Republicans from Florida, also have Cuban dissidents as their guests to the State of the Union.
With human/civil rights credentials like that, Antunez would be a natural to book on MSNBC, assuming, of course, that he wasn't an implacable foe of the Castro regime.
